WTXF-TV
Encyclopedia : W : WT : WTX : WTXF-TV
WTXF-TV, channel 29, is an owned-and-operated station of the News Corporation-owned Fox Broadcasting Company, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From studios in downtown Philadelphia and transmitter located in the Roxborough section of the city, the station's signal covers the Delaware Valley area (Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware).
History
The station signed on the air on May 16, 1965 as independent station WIBF-TV out of nearby Jenkintown, owned by brothers William, Irwin, and Benjamin Fox. The Fox brothers had already been operating WIBF-FM (103.9 MHz., now WPPZ) for several years. The new UHF television station was located in the basement of the family's Benson East apartment building on Old York Road in Jenkintown. WIBF-TV was the first of three UHF independents in the Philadelphia market to sign-on during 1965, with WPHL-TV (channel 17) and WKBS-TV (channel 48, now WGTW-TV) arriving in September.
In 1969, Cincinnati-based Taft Broadcasting purchased the station and call letters were changed to WTAF-TV (as in its owner, Taft). In order to keep channel 29, Taft was forced to sell WNEP-TV (channel 16) in Scranton, Pennsylvania, due to FCC regulations at the time prohibiting a company from owning two television stations with overlapping coverage areas. Under Taft's ownership, WTAF soon established itself as a local powerhouse. By the start of the 1980s, WTAF had passed WKBS as Philadelphia's leading independent station. When WKBS left the air in the late summer of 1983, the station placed advertisements in TV Guide and local papers reminding Philadelphia viewers that channel 29 was still around and that channel 48's former audience was welcome to sample channel 29. But interestingly, the station passed on picking up any of channel 48's shows, most of which went to WPHL-TV.
WTAF-TV was also a strong sports station, having secured broadcast rights to the Philadelphia Phillies (Taft Broadcasting also owned a small portion of the team for much of the 1980s), the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers and the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers at various points. In the 1980s, the station also aired network shows that NBC's then-affiliate KYW-TV and ABC station WPVI-TV preempted in favor of local programming. In the spring of 1986, channel 29 added a 10 p.m. newscast, the second attempt in the market, and the most successful. In the fall of that same year, WTAF-TV became a charter affiliate of the fledgling Fox network.
As part of a group deal, all of Taft's independent and Fox-affiliated stations, including WTAF, were sold to the Norfolk, Virginia-based TVX Broadcast Group in February 1987. The new owners changed the station's call letters to the current WTXF-TV. The Taft purchase created a large debt load for TVX, and as a result the company sold a number of its smaller stations. Paramount Pictures purchased a minority stake in TVX in 1989. A year later, after calling itself TV-29 for many years, the station changed its on-air branding to Fox 29.
In 1991, Paramount acquired the remainder of TVX which it did not own, and the company's name was changed to Paramount Stations Group, with WTXF as its largest-market station. Viacom gained control of the stations as part of its purchase of Paramount Pictures in 1993. In 1994 Viacom announced plans to create a new network service, the United Paramount Network, which it would co-own with Chris-Craft Industries. The initial affiliation plans called for WTXF dropping Fox and becoming the Philadelphia outlet for the new network, which would launch in January 1995. Though Fox received no official notification from Viacom that the affiliation would be cancelled, Fox made a preliminary deal to buy rival station WGBS-TV (channel 57, now WPSG). Signs of the planned switch began showing up at the start of the 1994-95 season, when WTXF began calling itself simply "29."
The planned move coincided with the biggest affiliation shuffle in Philadelphia television history. In the spring of 1994, CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting, owners of KYW-TV, had entered into a long-term affiliation agreement, which resulted in KYW-TV dropping NBC in favor of CBS. CBS would then sell its longtime owned-and-operated station, WCAU-TV. Several months earlier, Fox entered into a multi-station, multi-year partnership with New World Communications. New World and NBC emerged as the leading bidders for WCAU, with New World intending to switch WCAU to Fox if it emerged victorious. Fox later cancelled its preliminary deal to purchase WGBS and joined the bidding for WCAU, which was eventually sold to NBC. During this time, Viacom/Paramount changed its Philadelphia plans and decided to sell WTXF to Fox, a sale which was finalized in September 1995. Almost simultaneously, Viacom bought WGBS and made it the market's UPN station.
Fox assumed control of WTXF in September 1995. As a Fox owned-and-operated station, WTXF immediately added more first run talk and reality shows to the schedule. In 1996, morning cartoons were dropped in favor of a weekday morning newscast, Good Day Philadelphia. Throughout the mid-to-late 1990s, WTXF was available nationally on satellite as the east coast Fox feed, most notably on PrimeStar.
The station ID was changed to Fox Philadelphia in 1996, but in 2002 reverted back to Fox 29 because of confusion with the Fox News Channel. WTXF also underwent a major overhaul of its building and studios in Old City Philadelphia, with a ["Window on the World" type studio] making its debut on June 6, 2005.
In areas of New Jersey where the Philadelphia and New York City markets overlap, WTXF shares resources with New York sister stations WNYW and WWOR-TV. The stations share reporters for these stories. It is expected that, in the very near future, WTXF will expand its news operations to include early-evening newscasts, enabling channel 29 to go head-to-head with the three other network-owned stations.
During 2006 WTXF-TV will overhaul its on-air look, adopting a logo and graphics similar to that of the Fox News Channel, as several other Fox-owned stations have done so already. Channel 29 is also expanding its facilities to include a new studio for its newscasts. The "Window of the World" studio was originally intended for Good Day Philadelphia.
Logos
Newscasts
- Good Day Philadelphia - Monday-Friday 5:00-9:00 a.m.
- *Early Morning Anchors (5-7 AM): Sharon Crowley and Nick Smith
- *Hosts (7-9 AM): George Mallet and Jennaphar Frederick
- *News Anchor (7-9 AM): Kerri Lee Halkett
- *Weather: Sue Serio
- *Traffic: Dorothy Krysiuk
- Fox 29 Ten O'Clock News - every night 10:00-11:00 p.m.
- *Anchors: Dawn Stensland and Dave Huddleston (weekdays); Joyce Evans (weekends)
- *Weather: Rob Guarino (weekdays), David Aldrich (weekends)
- *Sports: Don Tollefson (weekdays), Bill Vargus (sports)
See also
WTXF-TV PersonalitiesTrivia
Philadelphia will be the largest television market where My Network TV will not be awarded to a Fox owned-and-operated station, as the affiliation was awarded to WPHL-TV. As a result, WTXF will not have secondary affiliation with the network.External links
- [WTXF-TV website]
- [Photos of WTXF's studio]
- [report of WTXF's studio]
- [Query the FCC's TV station database for WTXF-TV]
- [Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia]
- [WTXF on TV-Ark)]
| Terrestrial television>Broadcast television in the Philadelphia / Camden / Wilmington market [(Nielsen DMA #4)] | ||
|---|---|---|
|
KYW 3 (CBS) -
WPVI 6 (ABC) -
W07DC 7 (ABC) -
WELL-CA 8 (DS) -
WCAU 10 (NBC) -
WHYY 12 (PBS) -
WPHL 17 (The WB - to be MNTV in 09/06) (The Tube on DT2) -
WNJS 23/WNJT 52 (PBS/NJN) -
W25AW 25 (A1) -
WFPA-CA 28 (TFR) -
WTXF 29 (Fox) -
WQAV-LP 34 (AV/Ind) -
WYBE 35 (Public) -
WLVT 39 (PBS) -
WMGM 40 (NBC) -
W40AZ 40 (Smile) -
WMCN 44 (ShN) -
WGTW 48 (TBN) -
WTVE 51 (Religious) -
WPSG 57 (UPN - to be The CW in 09/06) -
WBPH 60 (FamNet) -
WPPX 61 (i) -
WWSI 62 (TMO) -
WUVP 65 (UVN) -
WFMZ 69 (Ind)
| ||
| Past broadcast stations | ||
|
WKBS 48 (IND)
| ||
| Local cable television channels | ||
| CN8 - Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia | ||
| WWCP 8 () - WFXI-CA 17 () - WTXF 29 () - WPMT 43 () - WPGH 53 () - WOLF 56 () - WFXP 66 () | |
| See also: , , , , , and Stations in Pennsylvania | |
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.